Rd 2, 2025: Cowboys vs Sharks Post Game Review

[00:00:01] The Royal Motor Yacht Club Port Hacking is a hidden gem of the Shire, situated on the banks of the beautiful Port Hacking. It's a great place to catch up with friends, celebrate your birthday or any special occasion, and they always show the NRL live on the big screens. The RMYC Port Hacking, proud sponsors of this podcast and big supporters of the Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. Check out their website rmycph.com.au

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[00:01:05] Hey there, welcome to SharkCastPod, a podcast dedicated to the greatest sporting club in the history of the world, the mighty Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. This short, sharp review of the Round 2, 2025 North Queensland v Cronulla Sharks game is brought to you by Dyson Logistics, the Royal Motor Yacht Club in Port Hacking and Jason Hawes at Crips and Crips Real Estate. My name is Sam Chenazzi, OG2015

[00:01:29] and it was a comprehensive win tonight by the mighty Cronulla Sutherland Sharks, 36 points to 12 over the Cowboys in Townsville and a lot to work on still but a lot to be happy with with that performance. They bombed two to three tries. They had a couple disallowed. The Cowboys tries in particular were soft so I thought there was a vast difference between the two teams tonight.

[00:01:54] I listened to Coach Fitzgibbon's press afterwards. He wasn't feeling that. He thought it was quite a competitive game. I thought that with the exception of maybe when we would had a one-man advantage in fact, when they had 12 men on the field, we had 13. Probably the only time the Cowboys showed a lot of grit and heart and we couldn't quite run away with the game at that point. But overall, I was pretty happy with that performance. In particular, the completion rate, 89%. 39 of 44 sets.

[00:02:24] That's always going to go a long way to win the game. 23 missed tackles and that was the benchmark for what happened throughout the game. Just some really good, strong football and a very good team effort with some standouts as well. Here is how the game ran down and shook out to start with. The Sharks were making a lot of meters straight up the middle of the field. That was very obvious. They took the blueprint from the Manly Cowboys game last week.

[00:02:54] In the eighth minute, Kyle Iro broke some tackles and scored a try. Niko missed from the touchline and it was 4-0 Sharks. Noticable that Niko was goal kicking. 25th minute, Braley try assist to Nikora. Close to the line, 10-0. Niko kicks the goal. The first error came after 26 minutes and the 28th minute, Sam Stone Street had a kick defense error and the Cowboys scored.

[00:03:22] From that, I think that we can learn that it's much better to catch a ball in a traditional rugby league way than in the AFL way. But that's for another time. 30th minute, Niko to Will to Stone Street. Try, 14 points to 6. Niko kicks a beautiful kick from the sideline. 16 points to 6.

[00:03:42] And the 37th minute, one of the highlights of the game, Will Kennedy, which we'll talk about soon with an amazing try save in the corner. 38th minute, a no try to Britten Nikora for an obstruction. Half-time 16-6 to the Sharks. 47th minute, Stone Street with a line break after some great work from Niko Hines. Stone Street is chased down. But then the player, Perdue, goes in the sin bin for 10 minutes.

[00:04:10] Straight from that, there is a BHU error. And then from the scrum, there's a penalty against us for not meeting the clock requirements. So a bit of a comedy of errors there. 55th minute, no try to Blake Braley with some nice Trindle lead up. 58th minute, a Kennedy line break from a kick. Stone Street again is run down. But they go left to Trindle to Teague. Try, 20 points to 6.

[00:04:38] Niko with another beautiful conversion from the sideline. 22 to 6. 62nd minute, Ronnie scores via Trindle and Kennedy with the assist. 26 to 6. Niko kicks the goal. 28 to 6. 68th minute, Trindle bombs a try from his own kick. 74th minute, Stone Street scores from a Hines and Trindle, I guess, co-assist kind of try. 32 points to 6. 76th minute, Drinkwater gets a try in the middle of the field.

[00:05:08] 32 to 12. And the 78th minute, Niko with a try assist to Cal Iro. 36 to 12. Talakai misses the goal. Conversion is 100th game. 36 points to 12. Full time, Cronulla Sutherland Sharks. Overall, looking at those stats, a very dominant performance. 55% possession. 89% completion rate. 11 line breaks to nil. 11. 7 offloads to 4.

[00:05:37] We ran for about 400 more meters. We missed 23 tackles to their 35. The penalties were 7 all. However, we had 6 reset starts to 1. And we made 8 errors. Kick meters, we kicked for about 200 more. So, overall, winning the stats, winning the game quite easily in my opinion. I thought, again, the score line did suggest that there was a difference between the two teams.

[00:06:03] And I thought, as I said earlier, it probably should have been a bigger score. Particularly in that first half. So, this leads us to talking about some players. For the Sharks, of course. The man of the moment. We spoke about him all week. We had back and forth with people. Arguing. Toeing and froeing. Umming and ahhing. Can we, can't we? Will Kennedy. One of our best yet again. Ran for 100 meters. One line break. Two line break assists.

[00:06:33] Two try assists. One try save at least. Two great games in a row from Will Kennedy. I'd love to hear your thoughts. On how you stand now after two games. Again, keeping in mind, I'm not the president of the Will Kennedy fan club. I'm just calling it how I see it. And he's in really good form. Sam Stonestreet. Two tries. Ran for over 200 meters. Busted five tackles. One try cause. We spoke about it before with the catching of the ball.

[00:07:01] I think he just needs to pay attention to how he's catching that ball. I know that's the more modern style that the young kids come through and they put their hands up. I don't like it. Let's get traditional. Let's catch the ball like a rugby league ball. However, I thought Stonestreet was improved yet again. I was surprised he was, he was chased down with those two opportunities to score because he is the fastest guy in our team. However, that's how it went down. From one of those breaks we scored.

[00:07:29] So not the end of the world, but we do need to see him score those tries when he's in the free space that he often finds himself in. But again, Sam Stonestreet is young. I don't even think he's played 10 games and he is learning on the go. Not a bad replacement for someone like Sione Katoa. Jesse Ramian, another strong game, backing up last week, 160 metres. He had five tackle busts, made 12 tackles and heavily involved.

[00:07:58] Kale Iroh, I thought was terrific. Two tries over 100 run metres, 16 tackles. 12 tackle busts. 12! Craig Fitzgibbon said in the press conference the injury towards the end of the game was a niggle from last week and he's not overly concerned about it. Ronaldo Militalo, a great game. One try, almost 200 run metres, four tackle busts. Heavily involved. Our halves I thought both did well. They both improved on last week.

[00:08:28] They sort of came in and out of the games a little bit, so they're still working on that. Braden Trindle, two try assists, two line break assists, 11 tackles. Kicked for 300 metres. Nico Hines, three line break assists, one try assist. Kicked for 323 metres. Made 19 tackles. So I think they both overall equaled each other in performance.

[00:08:55] It seemed at times one was more dominant over the other. It got the job done. Still a work in progress. Fanua Blake was what you expected. 130 metres, 19 tackles, no misses. Blake Braley had good moments. He was injured a little bit throughout the game. Made 43 tackles, no misses. Ran three times for 20 metres. Oregon Kifusi, very workman-like effort. The stats are not amazing.

[00:09:24] 22 tackles, 60 run metres. I'm not sure of his minutes that he played at the moment. Britton Nicker and T. Wilton I thought were both great. Each scored a try. Each ran for about 80 metres. Each made about 25 to 30 tackles. I thought that they were dangerous when they had the ball. Cam McInnes got the Paul Green medal from Coach Fitzgibbon. And that was for things that happened on the field and off the field.

[00:09:51] He ran for about 100 metres, made 32 tackles. And he was his inspirational self. It was revealed in the press conference that a bunch of the guys had COVID. Another bunch of the guys had a type of influenza from the trip to Las Vegas. Whilst this was known to many people behind the scenes, they of course could not let that out during the week for lots of different reasons.

[00:10:17] Also mainly because the coach would not want to see that as an excuse if they were to perform less than what they should. But thankfully they played out of their skin. So they need to come home and rest up and get Souths in a week. But if you take into account that a whole bunch of them had either COVID or the flu, it's a very strong effort tonight. And Cam McInnes wasn't affected by that, but he led throughout the week off the field.

[00:10:43] Dan Atkinson ran for about 40 metres, made 7 tackles, was busy in the short stint when he was in the middle. Talakai in his 100th game, as we said, missed a goal, ran for about 65 metres, made 14 tackles. Braden Hamlin-Welley, he had one noticeable error which the world heard and saw. And we're not excusing that, he needs to improve on that. He ran for 50 metres, made 7 tackles in a short stint.

[00:11:11] I think that he's continuing on week to week, getting back in his groove after having so many injuries. However, he does need to up the ante soon because some of the troops are coming back, including Toby Rudolph. With Tall Tom Hazlund missing the game through a back injury, which is short term, possibly back next week. Tugu Hatsapua played and he was good. He made 50 metres, made 14 tackles, no misses in his stint in the middle of the field.

[00:11:39] It was great to see him out there and he's only going to get better for that run. That's the lowdown on what happened tonight. I was impressed. It went better than I thought it would, given the fact that they travelled halfway around the world and then came back to Queensland and, or North Queensland even. And also the fact that it was known behind the scenes that they were quite shaken up by illness. So, great effort from the Sharks.

[00:12:05] They started off really well and I thought that maybe that would decrease as the game went on due to the extreme heat up there. But as the coach and captain said in the press conference, it was actually hotter in Sydney than it was in North Queensland. Not to talk down the heat up there. Sharks win their first game of the year. They'll be home in the next 24 hours and they can get ready for a reasonably normal week to play South Sydney 3 o'clock next Saturday.

[00:12:33] That is slightly less than seven days to get ready. But, but they did have a good stint off after their game against the Panthers in Vegas. So I'm not too worried about the travel at the moment. We thought tonight that if they lost, it could have been because of the Vegas travel and that kind of thing. But at the moment we're going to throw that out the window, thankfully, because tonight they performed out of their skin in a physical sense. It wasn't perfect, but they were very, very good given the conditions and given the circumstances.

[00:13:02] I don't think we can talk about that enough. Hey, this is Shark Cast Pod. We love you listening and sometimes watching us. Really appreciate all the feedback we get from you guys and girls. Keep it coming. We've got some mail we owe you. We realize that. We'll get to it. Bunch of episodes planned for next week already. Stick with us. We are Shark Cast Pod. We love doing what we do. You can go to our website, sharkcast.com.au. It has all the episodes on there and a bunch of other info,

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[00:15:21] It's going to be an exciting year. There will be more on that as the year develops. We can't wait to get into this week with South Sydney. We're going to do a lot more analysis on this game against the Cowboys. And we hope you're all doing well. We hope you're all doing as well as you can be. We want to send our love to our friend Mel and Tony. It's been a stressful, horrible couple of days for them. But we believe there's some good news there, which is incredible.

[00:15:47] So hopefully the boys in the black, white and blue put a smile on your dial tonight. And you put a smile on our dial because we heard that there's some good news. The health status of your beautiful family. So anyone else doing it tough out there, we send our love and respect to you. But hopefully the majority of you are doing just fine. This is SharkarsPod. We have every reason to play UpUpCronola. And you better believe we're going to play it right now.

[00:16:16] So play it loud. Put your headphones on if you're going to wake someone up when you sing it. This is SharkarsPod. Here comes the song. SharkarsPod. SharkarsPod. UpUpCronola boys in the black, white and blue.

[00:16:48] Sharkars forever. Now's the time to see all the sharks. SharkarsPod.

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[00:18:37] Jason Hawes, Crips and Crips Real Estate. Shut up now! Back in the Shire. Turn your porch lights off because we're coming out with a...